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Why a town in Union County wants to swap land with a church

The Township of Berkeley Heights will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 16 at Governor Livingston High School to discuss options for municipal redevelopment, which include in part, swapping property in a real estate transaction, with Little Flower Church.

When Rev. Andy Prachar, pastor of Little Flower Church here, approached the township in late 2012 about an exchange of parish property for township property, the decades-long debate over township municipal redevelopment finally gained traction.

The move, as it was proposed, involves swapping — in an appraised-value real estate transaction — the Upper Church, which includes a school, rectory and surrounding property, at 110 Roosevelt Ave. for the Berkeley Heights Library and its land, which sits next to the Little Flower Church on Plainfield Avenue. The church would then reconfigure its properties along Plainfield Avenue, where a smaller, "Little Church" sits.

In turn, the township would gain the ability to convert the existing buildings of the Upper Church into a new municipal complex and could sell its current municipal complex on Park Avenue, or could build a new municipal complex on the existing site and could sell the acquired property.

The transfer of property and municipal redevelopment project were the topic of a series of public hearings conducted last fall. Two options were explored:

• Building a new complex on the existing site without acquiring the church property.

• Relocating the municipal complex to the acquired church property and selling the existing complex.

Remaining options will be explored at the next public hearing, 7 p.m. Tuesday at Governor Livingston High School. These include:

• Building a new complex on the existing site with the acquisition of the church property.

• Redeveloping the existing municipal complex property and acquired church property under scenarios in which a new municipal complex would be built on one of these sites.

Hearing and educating

Township officials say they are eager to get more community input, and talk over the plans.

"It's an extremely complicated process, educating the taxpayers on the components and complexity of what the council is trying to achieve," Township Council President Jeanne Kingsley said.

Kingsley said the council has not yet determined the course of action for the project, and all the information learned from its study will have been presented by meeting's end.

"The Berkeley Height governing body will take the viable redevelopment options presented at the June 16 public meeting, as well as the public's input, into thorough consideration and will choose the option that best meets the community's service needs and is cost effective," Kingsley said.

Should all the areas in question be declared in need of redevelopment, New Jersey Redevelopment and Housing Law exempts redevelopment ordinances from referendum.

Kingsley said the council intends to host public coffee hours throughout the township in the weeks to come to help educate the community on the issue.

"The council's goal is to be extremely transparent and really understand the issue and the potential transaction to come to the right decision," she said.

"The need for a new government complex has been recognized by prior township councils dating back over 25 years," Mayor Robert Woodruff said. "This tremendous opportunity for redevelopment demanded the utmost due diligence while providing complete transparency to our citizens. It is our goal to work collaboratively with the community in identifying the redevelopment option that best meets the community's service needs and is cost effective."

Fix it

To the naked eye, the structures — administration building, police station, recreation commission and department of public works (DPW) — comprising the township municipal complex at 29 Park Ave. are outdated and overcrowded.

The township hired GRA Architects and Arcari Iovino Architects to inspect the structures, and they jointly released a final report of their study in March 2013.

Among their findings in a lengthy list of the buildings' deficiencies were:

• Inadequate handicap stalls in public parking areas.

• No code-compliant handicap bathrooms.

• HVAC systems that are old, inadequate and inefficient, with upgrades and replacements needed.

• Inadequate thermal insulation in walls and ceiling due to building age.

• Staff and work areas that are undersized and inefficient.

• Inadequate police patrol report area.

• A fueling area that has inadequate control/monitoring.

• Lack of indoor garage space for storage and equipment.

• No resident recycling drop off area.

"Right-sizing"

Little Flower Church sits on 26 acres connecting Plainfield and Roosevelt avenues. The Upper Church, surveyed at 15.6 acres, includes school and rectory buildings built in 1963-64 after the land was purchased from the township. The property is deed restricted and, if it is not used for an educational purpose, ownership reverts back to the township. The school closed in 1987, but is still used for CCD instruction, which keeps the property from reverting to the township.

According to Prachar, in 2009, the church had an engineering and architectural study conducted to learn what condition the entire property was in structurally. Prachar said within five to seven years from the 2009 study, the price would be an estimated $5 million in repair and modification costs to the school to replace the roofs and bring the building up to current building code requirements and standards. That did not include costs for a complete renovation of the Upper Church worship space, which is currently housed in the school's gymnasium/auditorium.

Citing this and a more than a $110,000 expense having asbestos removed from the school in a homily delivered in Dec. 2012, which is published on the church's website, Prachar wrote, "I was wearing the property manager hat more than I was wearing the hat of the priest and pastor," and proposed "right-sizing" the church's property — completely moving all parish activities to the Little Church property to be joined with the adjacent library property.

By this time, informal discussions of the property exchange had begun between the township, church and Archdiocese of Newark.

Costs

Whether the township builds new or exchanges property with the church and modifies the school and rectory, the price tag will be more than $23 million.

According to minutes from the hearing, they reported on a "space needs" study for departments and reviewed how the various areas would be used for two options — building a new structure on the existing municipal site and modifying the building of the Upper Church property for municipal needs.

If the township does not do a land exchange, tears down and rebuilds the municipal complex at its current site, costs, would be $19,536,841, according to the minutes. That is called "Option 1." Under that option, there would not be a new library and the other municipal departments would be moved off site for up to two years.

Once 20 percent in soft costs are added, the grand total for Option 1 is estimated to be $23,444,000.

"Option 2" includes the land exchange and building modifications suggested by the architects, costing $20,485,923, according estimates. Add in soft costs of about $4 million, including $2,845,000 that would be paid to Little Flower Church as per a Memorandum of Understanding between the church and township stating the value of the church property exceeded the value of the property of the library.

In regard to tax impact, property owners could see an increase in their property taxes between $267 per year to $350 a year for Option 1, and between $246 and $324 a year for Option 2, depending upon the terms of the bond and its length.